Grill Maestro

At the Grill Maestro household, we still are. Now that I think about it, I haven’t written about our Thanksgiving and how it was the first year in which we “fried” a turkey courtesy of the folks at Charbroil and The Big Easy. In fact, this Thanksgiving we fried it twice (once for friends, once for family) and had several lessons learned that bear mentioning I think (some of which are obvious, some aren’t).

Anyway, at our home with family we prepared a 16 lb. turkey (given the sizes of turkeys, the Big Easy can accommodate up to what I estimate is 16-18 lb. birds. Any larger and I think you have to force the bird into the basket. While that might be fine, I didn’t want to chance it with all that family coming over hungering for turkey! The best benefit of having the fryer was the fact that it freed up the oven. Forget the fact that the turkey was the best of the three years we’ve done it, forget the fact that the turkey was so juicy hardly anyone put gravy on it, forget the fact that it was so simply and so easy that I could do something else with my time as it cooked away diligently for 10 minutes a pound. Yep, the best was the fact we had an oven we could cook other things in like some ham, sweet potatoes, etc.

Lessons Learned:

• Spray the cooking basket with some non-stick spray capable of handling those temperatures. Our turkey didn’t stick even when I forgot but it makes cleanup easier.
• When the bird is finished, pull it out and cover it in tin foil. Don’t let it sit in the fryer. That baby is so hot even with the heat off that you keep cooking the bird.
• Don’t touch anything on the Big Easy without gloves, everything is hot. Everything.
• Breast side up! I made that mistake (even though it’s clearly mentioned in the literature!) when I made my two chickens.
• Get some gloves to help you pull the bird out of the basket. I tried dumping it out but the drumsticks slide through the basket and hold it up; you have to get glove or tongs or something to pull the bird out.